Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control apparatus and a print control method.
Description of the Related Art
There is a function in which in a case where print data is transmitted to a printing apparatus from a host terminal such as a PC or a mobile device to cause the printing apparatus to print, it is possible to instruct a print page range by specifying pages, for example, on that host terminal. Also, when generating such print data on the host terminal, sometimes one print job includes a plurality of PDL files. In a case that a print page range for a print job including a plurality of PDL files is specified in this way, pages to be printed and page numbers of documents corresponding to each PDL file and the entire print job cannot be specified at a stage of analyzing the PDL file. For this reason, even if the specified print page range is a part of the plurality of PDL files, for example, an analysis of PDL files and RIP processing are performed with respect to all pages of all files, and then when printing, narrowing down to pages of the target range is first performed and then print processing is executed.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-110900, a technique is recited for solving a problem in that in direct printing of PDF (Portable Document Format) files and the like, a total number of pages of print data cannot be displayed, and also because of this, a specified page range cannot be printed. According to this, specific identifiers to be used in the calculation of the number of pages in the document from one or two or more print data items being stored in an external storage medium are extracted, and the total number of pages of a document is calculated based on the extracted identifiers.
However, with the above described conventional technique, as previously mentioned, if a print page range is specified in relation to a print job including a plurality of files for which the total number of pages is unclear, the problem that it is necessary to execute PDL analysis and RIP processing in relation to pages outside of the print page range cannot be solved. In this way, conventionally, because PDL analysis and RIP processing have been executed in relation to pages outside the print target when a print page range is specified in relation to a print job including a plurality of files, there has been a problem in that unnecessary processing occurs when printing, and as a consequence the processing time becomes longer.